Say Hello To The New Cia

March 06, 1992

Compared with the dreaded KGB before the Soviet empire crumbled, the new KGB is a model of openness.

Yes, there are fears that thousands of unreconstructed hardliners still populate intelligence agencies in the independent republics that were formed out of the Soviet Union. The old terror network can't wait, reformers speculate, to execute orders for a crackdown.

But as soon as the coup against Mikhail S. Gorbachev failed last August, the atmosphere at headquarters in Moscow changed palpably. Vadim B. Bakatin, a civil engineer with a partiality toward Western liberalism, became chief of the KGB. Not only was the statue of the founder, Felix Dzherzhinsky, toppled, but Cold War secrets began to issue forth in an amazing stream. Many of the files were opened.

Well, new KGB, move over and make room for the new CIA.

Director Robert M. Gates, whom many, including The Courant, feared was inappropriate for the job because of his Cold War orientation, has announced several steps that he will take to make the CIA more open. He talked about fostering a greater sense of "public responsibility."

The biggest change will be a review of all agency documents more than 30 years old for possible declassification and release. Those would include files on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the 1954 Guatemala coup, the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban missile crisis. Release of those documents and others like them would be a boon to policy analysts, writers and academia. An annual index of all declassified documents would also be published.

Mr. Gates is to be commended for taking steps to lower the barriers to information. In so doing, he also properly emphasized that the CIA "is and will remain an intelligence organization which acquires secret information critical to our national security and which conducts legitimately secret activities."

Skeptics will doubt the agency's objectivity in reviewing the documents. Certainly "The Company" has agents as hardline as any who may continue to serve the KGB. Maybe there will not be an avalanche of old records for public perusal.

But let's take Mr. Gates at his word. This could be "a real shift" on the CIA's part -